Sinclair Lewis

The sea, wise men have observed, is the great civilizer. Sinclair Lewis was born in Minnesota. He began, during his newsgathering, as a romantic; hence Carol Kennicott, Leora Tozer, Sharon Falconer. His style has never transcended the monotonous, sardonic reportorial parenthesis, but he has transcended the romantic. He has flowered bitterly as a gopher-village agitator, a born malcontent, a flaying man, a perfectionist. His books betray a self-tortured spirit too coarsely active for tolerance (he begged God to strike him dead in a Missouri pulpit), too weak for silence (he lets an Elmer Gantry character dislike Main Street, then stabs him), too solemn for sportsmanship or humor (of which he has some, vide “a beard like a bath sponge,” a bartender crying “Whoop!”). His latest lie-hunter, in an all-night argument, voices the whole Lewis diagnosis: “I shall never be content” and its excuse: “Isn’t it a good thing to have a few people who are always yammering?”